Chapter 3
Ten seconds passed. No one moved.
The scar-faced man took another step forward. His shoes clicked on the marble in the silence. Guests in the front rows shrank back into their chairs. A woman near the cake started crying quietly.
“I asked a question,” he said.
Blake pointed a shaking finger at the steel box. “It’s in there. All of it. Wedding gifts. Just open it—”
“Nobody opens that safe,” Cole said, stepping in front of it. “Not tonight.”
The scar-faced man smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile.
“Kid,” he said, “you don’t want to do this. My boss doesn’t like waiting. And when my boss doesn’t like something, people get hurt. Usually the people standing in the way.”
He nodded at the man with the bat. The man tapped it against his palm once. Twice.
Victoria grabbed Evan’s arm. “Do something! They’re going to kill your brother! Open the safe, Evan—break it if you have to!”
Evan looked at me. He looked at the men. He looked at his crying brother. For a second I thought he might actually be stupid enough to try something.
Then Rebecca spoke.
“Everyone in this room is being recorded,” she said, holding up her phone. “Audio and video. If you so much as touch that safe, if you threaten anyone here, if you break one more champagne flute—you’re looking at twenty years in federal prison. Extortion. Armed robbery. Assault. Take your pick.”
The scar-faced man laughed. “Lady, I’ve been threatened by better than a lawyer in heels.”
“I’m not threatening you,” Rebecca said calmly. “I’m telling you that Miss Moore has already transferred the exact amount Blake owes—eight hundred and seventy thousand dollars—into an escrow account. It’s there. It’s real. But it will only be released to your boss on two conditions.”
Everyone froze. Even Blake stopped shaking.
Victoria’s head snapped toward me. “You what? You have that money sitting there?”
“I’ve had it sitting there for three weeks,” I said. “I knew Blake’s debts were coming due. I knew exactly when the collectors would show up. I just wanted to see which of you would sell me out to pay for it.”
I looked at Evan.
“Turns out both of you did. Before the vows were even finished.”
The scar-faced man took a step closer to the podium. “What are the conditions?”
“First,” Rebecca said, “you and your men leave this ballroom immediately. No threats. No property damage. You go out the same doors you came in, and you wait in the parking garage. My team will bring you the transfer confirmation in ten minutes.”
“Second?”
“Second,” I said, stepping forward, “Blake Carter signs a sworn affidavit admitting that his mother, Victoria Carter, has been running an illegal money-laundering operation through the Carter Foundation for the past seven years. He names every account. Every shell company. Every politician she paid off. And he signs it right now.”
The ballroom exploded.
Victoria screamed and lunged at me, but two of my security men caught her. She kicked and scratched, her diamond bracelets flying across the room.
“TRAITOR!” she shrieked at Blake. “YOU TELL THEM NOTHING! I WILL DISOWN YOU! I WILL LEAVE YOU WITH NOTHING—”
“Mom,” Blake sobbed, “they’re going to break my legs! They said they’d go after Mia and the kids—”
“Let them!” Victoria screamed. “Better your children than everything I built!”
The words hung in the air.
Even Evan flinched.
The scar-faced man looked at Victoria like she was something he’d scraped off his shoe. Then he looked at Blake.
“Kid,” he said, “I’ll give you five minutes to sign whatever she wants. If that money isn’t in our account in ten, I start with your fingers. Then I go find your wife.”
He pulled a chair from a banquet table and sat down, crossing his arms. The man with the bat leaned against the wall beside him.
Blake turned to his mother.
“Mom,” he whispered. “Tell me what to do.”
Victoria was still being held by two security guards. Her hair was wild, her makeup running down her face. The queen was defeated, and everyone in the room had watched it happen.
But then her eyes changed.
The panic vanished. The fury smoothed out. What replaced it was something colder. Something I recognized because I had practiced it in the mirror every night for a year.
May you like
Calculation.
“Sign it, Blake,” she said, her voice suddenly calm. “Sign every word.”
